Maximum execution time for JavaScript

Question

I know both ie and firefox have limits for javascript execution (Source 1, Source 2). Based on number of statements executed, I heard it was 5 million somewhere in IE and ba

Answer 1

The following article by Nicholas C. Zakas discusses how and when different browsers interrupt long running JavaScript code:

• What determines that a script is long-running?

Breaking long processing code into small chunks and launching them with timers is in fact one way to get around this problem. The following Stack Overflow post suggests a method to tackle this:

• Show javascript execution progress

On the other hand, web workers would be more suited for long running processing, since their execution happens in a separate process, and therefore does not block the UI thread:

• Mozilla Dev Center: Using web workers
• John Resig: Computing with JavaScript Web Workers
• Nicholas C. Zakas: Experimenting with web workers

However web workers are not supported in Internet Explorer yet, and they would not have access to the DOM.